[HCX] Error when creating service-mesh in a VCF environment: OVERLAY_BACKED does not span all the hosts in at least one of the Compute Clusters

Products

• VMware HCX

Issue/Introduction

In a VCF enviornment you receive the below error when creating an HCX Service-Mesh

Validate RemoteService Mesh failed. Interconnect Service Workflow ValidateRemoteServiceMesh failed. Error: [HCXMESH] Service mesh validation at remote site failed. Switch: <Transport_zone_name> of type: OVERLAY_BACKED does not span all the hosts in atleast one of the Compute Clusters

Environment

VMC (VMware Cloud Foundation)

HCX

Federated NSX

Cause

Below are some of the limitations for a VMC SDDC. 

• 1 transport zone per NSX instance.
• 1 NSX instance per workload-domain
• 1 vCenter per workload-domain.
• If you wish to Federate your NSX instance, it must be federated after initial TZ creation. 
  
  • When the TZ is created before NSX is federated, ownership path of the TZ changes to ""transport_zone_id": "/global-infra/sites"  - Indicating the NSX GM (Global-Manager) has taken ownership of the TZ.

Due to the above limitations, an issue arises when trying to utilize the Default TZ in a federated NSX VCF enviornment. 

Because HCX does not support linking directly with NSX GM's, it does not support objects owned by the GM such as TZ's with the above path. This will cause HCX SM creation to fail as it cannot lookup Transport-Zones owned by Global-Managers.

 

Resolution

The only known workarounds are as follows:

• Remove the NSX Local-Manager from the Global-Manager. 
• Create a new Transport-zone from the NSX Local-Manager. 

Additional Information

Overlay Design for VMware Cloud Foundation

Restrictions and Limitations for Network Extension